1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a scanner, or more particularly, to a scanner having a film image fetching unit and a film holding unit freely attachable or detachable to or from the film image fetching unit.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various kinds of scanners for reading images from a plurality of kinds of films such as a film stowed in a film cartridge, a strip film, and piece films have been proposed in the past. For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 5-145838 describes a film player comprising a first film holding means for holding a first developed film stowed in a cartridge, a second film holding means for holding a second developed film such as piece films and/or a film strip not stowed in the cartridge in the same manner as the first film, a film transportation means for transporting an image area recorded in the first or second film to a given imaging area, and a video signal reproducing means for reproducing the image in the image area as a video signal.
More particularly, the film player has a mechanical member including gears for feeding the film stowed in a cartridge to a given reading position, and a mechanical member including feed rollers for inserting piece films and/or film strips through insert ports and feeding an image on each piece film and/or strip to the given reading position. The film fed to the given reading position is illuminated by an illumination light source, and then an image is read from the film by a CCD.
However, the film player requires two film driving members associated with the respective films so as to handle the two kinds of films; the piece films and the film stowed in the cartridge. Spaces in which the film driving members are placed are accordingly needed.
Moreover, since feed positions are optically the same position, the restrictions imposed on the arrangement of the two mechanical members get greater. This invites an increase in both complexity and size of a scanner and becomes a factor of crippling the effort to make a scanner more compact. Furthermore, it becomes a cause of deteriorating the reliability of image fetching, and also becomes a factor of inviting an increase in total cost of a scanner.
As a means for solving the foregoing problems, the present applicant has proposed a scanner comprising a film image fetching unit and film holding units freely attachable or detachable to or from the film image fetching unit and associated with various kinds of films. According to the proposal, various kinds of films can be handled with a relatively simple configuration but the increase in size and complexity of a scanner will not be invited.
However, according to the foregoing configuration, every time film holding units are changed, a film driving sequence, a range of image fetching, and focus must be modified according to a new film holding unit. A user must therefore set a film image fetching unit according to the type of object film holding unit. It cannot be said that maneuverability is good.